


Indifferent

by SteRhubarb



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bodyswap, F/M, Fluff, Genderswap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:23:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteRhubarb/pseuds/SteRhubarb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas wakes up human every day now. That's almost normal. He does not always wake up a woman, however. That is definitely not normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indifferent

**Author's Note:**

> Another directionless piece that was left on my computer unfinished.

Castiel rolled onto his back and stretched, arms reaching over his head, feet pointing down to the end of the bed as a long groan escaped him. Blinking awake, he stared up at the motel ceiling and thought about Heaven, let the crushing weight of realisation hit him like it did every morning, that he was no longer an Angel of the Lord and all the things that came with it, like home and family.

Usually he would roll onto his side at this point, wrap his arms around his slight frame and squeeze his eyes shut, trying to remember what it all looked like, felt like, sounded like. He would hold his breath and press, and push, force his body and mind to try and remember, but it never had anying to do with this limited vessel, and his existence was much more than human senses could capture or hold on to. 

So he would stop. 

When he could hold his breath no longer, and the tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, he would gasp in a breath at last and try not to fall into the sobbing that threatened to come.

This morning as he rolled over, a clump of dark hair fell over his shoulder and pooled on the bed beside his shoulder. A pair of plump breast also pressed into the bed between his arms and a distinct lack of something between his legs stirred a feeling of unease in Castiel. 

He pushed up into a sitting position and pulled back the sheets to bare his shapely, hairless legs to the cool motel air. The boxers he had gone to sleep in where still there, but his body had changed beneath them.

He sighed, “Dean won’t be happy with this.”

Lucky for Castiel, Dean was on breakfast duty that morning and so Sam was the only one left to deal with the news of Cas’ womanly state. 

Sam slept in the bed positioned in the centre of the motel, between Castiel’s bed by the window, and Dean’s next to the bathroom. His limbs hung out from under the sheets and the knuckles of his right hand grazed the carpet where he lay on his front, face pressed into the pillow, facing away from Castiel.

Cas approached quietly, but shook Sam’s shoulder firmly, waking him instantly, but without alarm. 

It took only a moment for the great Moose to stir and pull all of his limbs back in so as to turn towards the figure stood over him, which he noticed as his eyes came into focus, was a woman wearing only a pair of striped, blue boxer shorts.

“Sam, I think something happened to my body during the night,” Cas announced, deciding it was a good time to see what changes had gone on beneath the shorts, as Sam struggled to avert his gaze from the protruding breasts.

“No shit.”

Sam climbed out of the bed and moved to where Dean had left the Winchester clothes duffel on his own bed, rummaging through it until he pulled out one of Dean’s plain, grey shirts and throwing it at Cas, mumbled an urgent “get this on”.

___________________________________

Getting Castiel to put on some better fitting clothes proved to be difficult, and while he was stubborn about the coat, Sam managed to convince him that a pair of Dean’s jeans would look better than the loose slacks of Jimmy Novak’s. The shoes were a joke, though, so Sam just threw them into the duffel and told Cas to walk to the car in socks.

Dean was pulling into the car park as they shut the motel door behind them, and he climbed out of the car as he noticed the woman in Castiel’s trench coat. 

He raised an eyebrow at Sam and waited for the explanation, to which Sam simply tilted his head incredulously.

“ _Seriously_?” He snapped, turning to Castiel, who was staring at Dean in a ‘why-do-I-bother-with-this-idiot’ way. “It’s Cas!”

Dean looked between them, until he was sure they weren’t fucking with him and then stepped back to get a better look. “ _Cas_?”

“Dean.” He replied, almost irritated. 

“What the fuck did you do to him?” Dean suddenly yelled, turning to Sam and snatching the duffel from him to shove into the back of the Impala. “I was gone for like two hours!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot I had the ability to turn guys into girls in my sleep, Dean.” Sam retorted, deadpan, shoving past his brother to walk around the car to the passenger side.

Dean just gawped at the woman currently drowning in a tan overcoat and staring into the sky, then wiped a hand down his face with a sigh.

“What are we supposed to do with him? Her?” Dean asked, and then mumbled “Just get in the car” to Cas, who stumbled across the gravel in Sam’s socks before plopping down in the back seat.

___________________________________

They arrived at Bobby’s mid-afternoon after spending the whole drive down see-sawing between bickering over how it could have happened and painful silence in which Dean would steal glances back at Castiel in the rear-view mirror.

He would narrow his eyes at Cas, who sat patiently in silence, staring out of the window or itching the back of his neck, up under all the hair.

It was after the fifth or sixth time Dean had caught Cas doing this that he snapped and broke the silence to ask if Castiel had headlice, to which the blue eyes fixed on Dean’s in the mirror and that familiar head-tilt sent a wave of long, curly hair cascading down the front of Castiel’s borrowed t-shirt. 

The car swerved a little and Sam’s snicker brought Dean back to attention, straightening up on the road with a dirty look thrown at his brother.

Dean stormed ahead through the front door of Bobby’s house, while Sam helped Castiel climb out with the duffel and hobble up the path in the now dirty socks.

Bobby was sat at the kitchen table when Dean found him, passed him, and instantly grabbed a beer from the fridge.

“Well what’s gotten your panties in a bunch that you can’t even say a hello to a fella before you steal his beer?” Bobby growled, giving a nod to Sam and his girl friend as they entered.

“Check out Cas’ souped up vessel,” Dean leaned at the kitchen counter to join in Bobby’s gawping at the little lady he suddenly had to accept was Castiel.

“Hello, Bobby.” Cas greeted in the new voice that came with the package, but somehow still had the gravelly low thing going on. “It seems I have been moved into a new body, much like I would change vessel if I were still an Angel of the Lord.”

“You got any idea who did it?” Bobby asked, much to Dean’s annoyance. 

“Don’t you think we’ve been through all this? We just drove four hours across country. We’ve covered all the basics and we’ve come up with buttkiss.”

“Isn’t there someone we can summon? Ask ‘em some questions?” Bobby suggested, which halted Dean in his ranting so as to share a look with Castiel.

“I don’t…” Cas blinked quickly, a newly formed human tell that Dean had picked up on meaning he was uncomfortable talking about something. “I haven’t got an- I mean, I wouldn’t know any… anyone-“

“Cas,” Dean interrupted softly, placing a hand on his forearm. Castiel zoned back in from looking around the room with distressed jerks of his head, and met Dean’s sympathetic gaze. “We get it, you don’t know anyone. It’s okay.”

Castiel nodded.

“Would Kevin know?” Sam offered quickly, taking some heat off Cas. 

Bobby and Dean exchanged glances and then Dean shrugged. “Worth a shot, right? You got his number somewhere, Sam?”

Twenty minutes later, Sam hung up the phone and sighed, leaning back in the desk chair under the impatient gazes of the others.

“Nothing.” Sam admitted, reluctantly. Bobby and Dean both sighed.

Nobody said anything for a long time, until the small noise of Cas’ coat rustling gently caught some attention. It was Cas shrugging.

“What?” Dean asked, a little irritated at why Cas wouldn’t just spit it out.

Another shrug and then Cas tilted his head at the ground, pursed his lips and looked up at them all.

“I just, I don’t understand-“

“Oh, here we go,” Dean sighed, rubbing a hand over his face.

“No,” Castiel affirmed with something close to a scowl at Dean. “I don’t understand the problem. Why we need to fix anything, I mean.”

Sam and Bobby exchanged a look and Dean just looked straight to Cas incredulously.

“What do you mean? You’ve been turned into a woman! Why are you acting so cool about this?” He snapped.

“Man, woman. It doesn’t matter. As an Angel, gender means nothing. You’re used to seeing a face now, but that doesn’t mean that is who I am. I did not wish for this, but I do not mind it. I am indifferent.”

“But you’ve lived as a _dude_ for years now, you can’t just change to a woman and be okay with it, the same way I wouldn’t be able to!”

“Because that is all you have known your whole life, Dean. I could have chosen any vessel, and adapted to it easily, as I have to Jimmy Novak’s. Angels have-“

“You’re _not_ an Angel of the Lord anymore! You’re a human, and you’re a human man!

Everything was quiet again, but the air was electric.

Cas sat upright with a look on his soft face like he had just been slapped. His perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed in a hurt expression and his sky-blue eyes glazed, lips parted as a pained breath puffed out.

Before another word could be spoken, he got to his feet and paced out of the room. The sound of the front door clicking shut brought Bobby and Sam out of their stunned silences. Bobby stirred and left toward the kitchen, but Sam sat staring at his brother indignantly.

Dean soured under the gaze of it for a couple of moments, and then met his eyes. 

Sam just shook his head and then got to his feet to wander away, probably to go and bitch with Bobby.

___________________________________

As Sam stepped down from the porch it had only just began raining lightly, but the dark cloud that hovered a town over was blowing toward them. Cas was going to need some shoes if that thunder cloud was going to approach within the hour.

Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the door with a soft click. He put the keys in the ignition, but just let them hang there, placing his arm over the back of the passenger seat instead. 

“I think you were right.” Sam spoke aloud to the car. “When you said that it’s all he’s known his whole life. Dean’s like that. Stuck in his ways. He’s never been a fan of change.”

“For himself, or for others really,” he added as an afterthought, as the night he told Dean and his father about going away to college flashed through his mind. That had been a mess that had ended in a family torn apart and Sam kicked out of the house, out of the family.

But he didn’t really get far in the memory before it was interrupted by a sniffling sound from behind him.

He turned in the seat and peered down into the foot well of the back seat, on to the head of Castiel, knees pulled to his chest and back against the door. 

The shoulders shook, only slightly, and the sleeve of the tan coat was dappled with wet patches. Sam just stared, the sound of an ex-Angel crying sending him into an unnerved silence. More than that, though, the sound of Castiel crying. 

“You wanna get away for a while?” He offered. “We should go get you some shoes that fit, if you’re gonna be like this, you know, a while. Maybe some clo-“

“Why are you so accepting and he is not?” Cas’ voice cut through Sam’s, even almost inaudible through the broken sobs. “I’m the one who has to deal with this change. I’m the one stuck like this, and forced to remember everything that I was, that I’ve lost. And that is mine to deal with, but Dean, he- He doesn’t understand. Nobody does, but especially him.” 

Sam closed his mouth after letting it hang open throughout Castiel’s speech. He looked quickly to the house, then back down to Cas’s head. “You’re not talking about the body change any more, are you?”

Cas’s eyes wandered to the back windshield, eyes still glazed over from crying, and just licked his lips. “It’s raining. I would appreciate the shoes.”

___________________________________

At the height of the thunder storm Sam and Cas returned to Bobby’s with some plain black canvas pumps. Not ideal for walking through rain, but they fit and were comfortable.

Sam insisted that Castiel kicked them off at the door to dry off a little, but Cas was so happy with them, that he kept them on and trudged rainwater through the hallway, up the stairs where Bobby shouted from his bedroom for the two of them.

They entered the room to find Bobby piling clothes from his wardrobe onto the dusty dresser in front of the window. 

Something yellow stood out in the centre of the pile, sandwiched between different shades of blue with some white thrown in. Definitely not Bobby’s clothes, or not from this decade, anyway, but they didn’t have to ponder for long before he held the pile out to Castiel with a soft smile.

“They’re just some of my wife's old things. They’ll fit better than anything these giants can lend you.” He nudged Sam and then nodded to Cas’ feet. “Nice shoes.”

Castiel took the pile, hesitantly, and thanked Bobby. “I’ll go and put some on. These ones are wet now.”

In front of the bathroom mirror, Castiel tugged the damp t-shirt over his head and let the oversized jeans and boxers drop to the floor, before slipping the yellow thing, which turned out to be a tea-dress, over his head. It took a try or two to find the right holes for the head and arms, and then suddenly found a pretty young thing looking back at him from the mirror.

He raked his long, slender fingers through wet hair and pulled it all to one side, dropping it over his right shoulder. He was staring intently at it soaking into the fabric and turning it a brownish colour when the bathroom door swung open.

“Oh!” Dean snapped, stepping back and stalling in the doorway, unsure. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were in here.”

“No, I am sorry. I let my mind wander and lost track of what I was doing. I’ll gather my things and you can use the bathroom.” Castiel insisted, bending to gather up the wet clothes from the floor, then stalked past Dean who pressed himself back against the door to let Cas pass.

“Look, Cas, I’m sorry about what I said to you before. You can be whatever you want, I guess. I’ll just have to get used to it.” Dean mumbled quietly, to Cas’s shoes, where he had paused in the hallway.

Castiel stared at him, clutching the pile of clothes tightly. “Thank you,” he managed to grind out before turning away. “But it doesn’t mean anything. Human is human.”

He had reached the top of the stairs before Dean caught up, stomping up behind him and grabbing Castiel at the elbow to turn him back.

“No, look, Cas, I wanna talk about this!”

“And I do not,” Cas replied, avoiding eye contact, but staying put on the top of the stairs.

“Well, then you’re gonna listen.” Dean commanded, snatching the pile of clothes from Cas’ grip and throwing them on the floor against the wall. “I know I’m a dick sometimes, alright? And you’re having a hard time adjusting to life as a human, so you don’t care _what_ you are because you’re hating humanity right now. I get it. I know you think I don’t, but I do.”

Cas glanced up into blazing green eyes.

“But we’re trying to help- _I’m_ trying to help you out with all that stuff. But one of the things that makes it easier for me is having some semblance of normality in the middle of all this crazy shit, and for me that is seeing your face –your other face- the one I’ve gotten used to after all these years, and grown to… to recognise.”

Dean sighed. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You love me.” Cas nodded, looking up at Dean with an awed expression, to which Dean’s shoulders dropped and brow furrowed, unsure how Cas had derived that particular conclusion from what he had said. “You get angry because you care, and because you prefer my other body, even though it is male. It is funny, I thought you would like me better this way, but you actually hate it.”

“I don’t hate it.” Dean breathed, all he could manage in the face of what was happening between them. “I just-“

“You love me as a man.” Cas offered, nodding, as though he understood.

“I love you as you.” Dean admitted, and then rolled his eyes at himself. Total chick-flick moment.

Castiel smiled.

“Alright, quit the smug grinning,” Dean huffed, turning to pick Cas’ strewn clothes up from behind him. “You’ll be happy to know you can still nail the goofy smiling thing with your new face.”


End file.
